AROUND THE NATION

AROUND THE NATION; Sun Myung Moon Paper Appears in Washington

Special to the New York Times

Published: May 18, 1982

WASHINGTON, May 17—
Residents of the nation's capital, a onenewspaper city since The Washington Star folded more than nine months ago, found 130,000 copies of a new newspaper, The Washington Times, on sale or being given away this morning.

A publication of News World Communications Inc., the newspaper unit of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, The Washington Times appeared in bright orange vending boxes scattered about the capital and its suburbs, competing with The Washington Post.

James R. Whalen, editor and publisher of the paper and the former editor of The Sacramento Union, wrote in this morning's editions that the newspaper would embrace ''a conservatism we believe as relevant and vital to the solution of man's problems today as it was in the mind and struggles of Edmund Burke two centuries ago.''

The newspaper, with a news staff of 121 persons, has an office near the National Arboretum in Northeast Washington and production facilities in both the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. The paper will sell for 25 cents.